Saturday, January 11, 2014

Discount Armageddon, by Seanan McGuire


Rating: 5/5
344 pages
2012
Publisher: Daw
Source: Present

Description: The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity - and to protect humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. 
Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George.
To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city....
(from the back cover)


Review: This is probably the most fun I've had reading a book where someone is murdered in a ritual sacrifice.

If you've gotten tired of the glut of vampire and werewolf books that dominate urban fantasy, this book is a refreshing change. We get to meet a host of other species, some I've heard of, some I hadn't, and a few I suspect the author may have invented. All of them a refreshing change of pace.

Verity is likable and the few bits we get of, and about, her family left me eager to learn more about them. The book is well paced, and has twists I didn't see coming.

While its the first book in a series, the story stands alone.

Overall, a fun romp with some serious bits.

No comments:

Post a Comment